Unpacking Purity Culture Ch. 1 (with Sunia Gibbs)

Trixie, Maria, and Céline talk, rant, and laugh with guest Sunia Gibbs about purity culture, its heyday in the evangelical church, how it connects to patriarchy and rape culture, and reclaiming a healthy sense of sexuality and selfhood. Sunia is a pastor, artist, and activist who leads The Groves Church in Portland. She also co-wrote the music for our podcast! Find Sunia at @suniagibbscreative on Instagram and on her website http://suniagibbsart.com. More about The Groves church at thegroveschurch.com.

Episode Notes & Annotations:

CONTENT WARNING: In this episode, we talk candidly about purity culture, including sexual shaming, modesty, toxic masculinity, and spiritual trauma. If you grew up in a similar Christian tradition, you might have baggage in common with us - but these topics aren’t always easy to engage with, depending on where you’re at. For us, this conversation was healing and cathartic; it might not be that way for others. Be informed, and be kind to yourself.

A NOTE ON LANGUAGE: We speak a lot about our own experience in this episode growing up socialized as women, especially in relation to purity culture, which enforces a rigid gender binary. Our language in this episode thus tends to be quite binary and gendered, i.e., centring cis women’s experiences. We want to acknowledge that our stories and language do not encompass the experiences of trans and non-binary folks who also were harmed by purity culture. We will be making room for these voices in future chapters as we continue the unlearning and learning journey. We’re also planning on unpacking the gender binary in a future episode, so stay tuned. We're grateful to do this work in community: send us feedback or questions at resettingthetablepodcast@gmail.com.

People, books, and other works mentioned during this episode:

• Kai Cheng Thom - I Hope We Choose Love
• adrienne maree brown - We Will Not Cancel Us
• Lisa Sharon Harper: https://lisasharonharper.com/
• “I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye” (documentary) - note: none of us have actually seen this, so we cannot endorse it.